He may be a patriot for Austria, but the question is whether he is a patriot for me.

Written laws are like spiderwebs: they will catch, it is true, the weak and poor but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful.

Every country has the government it deserves.

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

People revere the Constitution yet know so little about it—and that goes for some of my fellow senators.

The affairs of the world are no more than so much trickery, and a man who toils for money or honor or whatever else in deference to the wishes of others, rather than because his own desire or needs lead him to do so, will always be a fool.

If you must take care that your opinions do not differ in the least from those of the person with whom you are talking, you might just as well be alone.

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.

There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people.

It is impossible to tell which of the two dispositions we find in men is more harmful in a republic, that which seeks to maintain an established position or that which has none but seeks to acquire it.

The U.S. presidency is a Tudor monarchy plus telephones.

I shall be an autocrat: that’s my trade. And the good Lord will forgive me: that’s his.

Do that which consists in taking no action, and order will prevail.